Mural

The kitchen remodel is coming along. The old front hall will become my baking center in less than a week! Because I have decided to get rid of grout as much as possible in this house, I was looking for another treatment than tile for the back splash between the counter material and the upper cabinet. A few months ago I began thinking about a mural. This past week I actually painted a mural, sort of a bird's eye view of the bay area water and hills, with some vineyards and golden summer fields, too.

I've never painted a mural, so I was really anxious about starting. I decided to do it in pieces, starting with a sketch, using a white paint pen over the pumpkin butter wall color. After that I used some wall paint samples that didn't work out, one in a very pale gold and one in a khaki color, to paint in the general design...sort of creating a canvas. The photo at the start of the post shows how that worked out.

The following day I used more paint samples and some acrylic paints that were a gift from Straight Shooter. This allowed me to put some color on those hills and in the sky and on the water, making them very much three dimensional.

Now I was feeling more confident, so the next day I added the golden fields, trees and shrubs near and far, other detail, depth, and even some washes of color.

The best part was later in the day when I was able to add the details to the fields and more shades of green to the trees, plus closer trees on the left (below). That really made it work for me. Sweetie suggested that I add a horizon line and he was right. The deeper gold out past the hills, on the left, works very well. The whole painting is about 48 inches wide by 20 inches tall. There is a window just to the left, so it gets light from that side. That's why I had the light in the painting coming mostly from the left. The very upper and very lower sections will be covered by cabinets and counter top material, so not much work needed to happen there.

Today I deepened some color, added a wash of blue at the top of the hills and over the right side to suggest distance, then used tiny dots of yellow and white paint to suggest flowers in the nearest field. No photo of that yet, but when the cabinets are installed, I'll take a photo that shows how it all turned out and share it with you.

It has been a lot of fun learning how to get the effects I want and letting the paint take over some of the time, too, and just enjoying the unexpected results. My experience doing watercolor really helped, and my love of color and skill with color mixing helped, too. I'm often glad that I have creative talents, but today I really felt like an artist when I saw the finished mural. The cabinets arrive next week and then I'll be able to see how it all fits together. Best of all, I can enjoy looking at it while I bake once everything is finished!